Forgotten History
by FaithDaria
Summary: It's amazing what you can find in cold storage.


Title: Forgotten History

Series: Remaking, #1

Rating: Teen

Genre: AU, Crossover, Batman Beyond/Smallville

Spoilers: BB: Season 3, SV: Season 6, JLU: Epilogue.

Summary: It's amazing what you can find in cold storage.

The hallways of the Metro Tower looked taller than he remembered, but that was more likely due to the stoop of his shoulders rather than any structural change. They felt longer too, but that was his age talking again. Kent, of course, was disgustingly little changed. Damned Kryptonian biology. A man who ate like he did should have a heart condition and a spare tire that would fit a semi.

"Thanks for coming, Bruce."

"You called." He leaned on his cane and looked up at Clark, his expression saying that this had better be worth dragging him from his cave in broad daylight.

"You'll understand when you see him." Clark walked with his friend to the elevator. "Infirmary," he told the computer.

"See who?"

"It's a long story." His face became a little sad. "And I don't think you're going to like the ending."

"Did something happen?"

Clark shook his head. "I'll explain when we get there." They continued on, the faint whirr of the elevator the only sound as Bruce sifted through what he'd been told, looking for clues.

The doors slid open onto a familiar-looking floor, and Clark led Bruce down the hall and into one of the rooms. It was small, just big enough for a bed, some monitoring equipment, and a handful of chairs. The bed was occupied by what looked to be a teenaged boy, with pale skin and black hair and a build he hadn't really grown into. He was sleeping, though his breathing indicated it was not a natural sleep.

The other person in the room stood up when they entered with a half-smile on her face. "I was beginning to wonder if he'd taken you on a scenic tour."

"Chloe." Bruce regarded the tiny blonde woman with cautious respect and slight affection. Despite her youthful appearance, her sheer breadth of knowledge on the League alone made her one of the most formidable people on the planet. "Mind telling me what this is all about?"

"It's a long story."

"So I've heard." He followed the original Watchtower to a chair near the bed. "Maybe you should start with him." They sat down on opposite sides of the bed, Clark carrying a chair over to sit next to his wife. She smiled at him encouragingly; he must still be feeling guilty over whatever had happened. Clark smiled back and squeezed her hand, and then he turned to Bruce.

"I found him in the fortress this morning, in a stasis unit that I didn't even know existed."

"Kryptonian?"

"Human."

"And you called me because?"

"For three reasons, actually," Chloe said, reaching under the bed and pulling out a battered knapsack. "This is the first. We found it in the unit with him."

Only decades of experience kept a shocked expression from his face when he opened it, although he suspected that both Chloe and Clark knew him well enough to see his reaction anyway. Tucked away in the much-mended pack was a batsuit. He reached in and picked it up, cursing mentally. He could tell just by the feel of the material that this was the one he had made and not a copy, but he also knew that his suit was safely locked away in the cave beneath his house. This presented a problem.

"Bruce?" He looked up into Kent's worried eyes. Probably afraid I'm going to have a heart attack and leave him with this mess, the retired superhero mused with dark humor. "There's more. When I brought him here, I ran him through the database trying to find out who he is. This came up from the DNA scan." Clark passed an e-pad to Bruce, who scrolled through the information. This time he couldn't quite manage to keep his surprise internal.

'Subject: John Doe 1138-62. Species: Human. Gender: Male. Genetic Anomalies: None. DNA Analysis: Genetic commonalities suggest a one-generation familial relationship with 4604-08.'

Subject 4604-08 was, of course, himself: A little bit of paranoia had prompted him to keep his DNA scan anonymous, with anything that brought it up going straight to Watchtower and through her to him. John Doe 1138-62 was likely the boy on the bed. But what the report claimed was impossible. He looked across the bed to his friends. "Run it again."

"I have, Bruce. Twice." Chloe watched him sympathetically. "The results were the same. He's your son, Bruce. And there's still more to the story."

"Of course there is," Bruce said, his tone dry. "Just give me a minute." The possibility of a child of his own was one he had never let himself consider. It was far too dangerous for either Batman or Bruce Wayne to have a child, and the mission left no room for one. And deep within himself, he doubted his ability to be a father. Alfred had been wonderful, but he had never truly been a parent to him. Thomas Wayne was only a faded memory and a symbol of his work. And Dick Grayson hadn't spoken to him in years, which said a good deal about his skill for relating with the younger generation.

And now, out of nowhere, a son had dropped into his lap. Bruce wasn't sure whether to thank God or curse Him.

He shoved the emotions back, to be dealt with later. "What else?"

"Clark and I have met him before."

"When?"

She took a deep breath. "In 2007. At the same time that I became more than human."

"Tell me everything," Bruce demanded, leaning forward, his blue eyes intent. This had been one of the great mysteries of the early Justice League. No one, not even the Kents, had a clear picture of the exact events, although they all had theories.

"You already know the basics. We were investigating Cadmus, I got too close, they tried to take me out, and the Fortress saved my life by making me a Kryptonian hybrid."

Bruce nodded. It had happened just before he met the League, and a few months before he joined. Cadmus had been completely taken apart three years later, its data destroyed and the subjects of the experiments absorbed into the Justice League. "So where does the boy come in?"

"That's where it gets complicated."

"How complicated?"

"Time-travel complicated. He was sent back by the Fortress to save my life." Chloe's face twisted a little with disgust. "Apparently, in the original timeline I died. Clark became more and more isolated from the people he was supposed to protect as the humans he cared for dropped out of his life."

"The Fortress picked Chloe's death as a tipping point," Clark broke in, shooting a pained glance at his wife. "He was supposed to grab Chloe and bring her to it before Cadmus made its play, but he didn't. He talked me into taking her there, so indirectly that I didn't even realize it until we found him and started putting the pieces together."

That was more than a little sneaky. Bruce approved. "And the stasis unit?"

"Kryptonian technology doesn't include travel into the future, just the past. No doubt he was supposed to wake up the moment he left, with no memory of his time in stasis."

"I'm guessing there were further complications," Bruce said dryly.

"He doesn't exist, not officially. The name he gave us in 2007 brought up nothing, his picture isn't anywhere on the net, and his fingerprints aren't in any database I can access. Whatever events lead to his conception in the original timeline, I don't think they happened this time around." Chloe hesitated before bringing up one other theory. "And I also don't believe he was raised as your son. He might not even know about it."

"Where did you get this insight?"

"He was resourceful. Good at flying under the radar, even in a small town. Not used to much feminine attention." Chloe smirked a little at that last one, and Bruce knew there was a story to go along with it. "I could be wrong; he could just be very good at undercover. But the impression I got from him was lower-middle class, street smart, and used to doing without."

"But he and I do know each other well enough that I gave him the suit in that other timeline," he pointed out. "And I doubt I would have done so just because of genetics."

"Point taken," she said. "Just . . .proceed with caution, Bruce. I'd hate for either of you to get hurt."

Bruce nodded, stood up with only a little effort, and moved stiffly to the machines. He keyed in the command to stop sedation and hobbled back to his chair to wait for the drugs to wear off. "What was his name?"

"Terry McGinnis." Chloe smiled, a little weakly, and lead Clark out of the room. Bruce relaxed a little into the quiet semi-solitude and watched Terry breathe. He couldn't quite think of the boy as his son, not yet, but he felt an odd kinship with him nonetheless. He was an orphan of his timeline. Bruce could relate.

Bruce was still watching intently when the boy's breathing caught and pale blue eyes snapped open to meet his own. It was a little startling to recognize his own eyes in someone else's face, but he kept his reaction to himself. "How do you feel?"

"Lousy," he said, his voice rough. The young man sat up slowly and looked around, finally reaching for the water pitcher near the bed. His voice was a little smoother when he spoke again. "I'm back in the Watchtower?" Bruce nodded. "Figures. Next time Clark has a problem at the Fortress, he can call Green Lantern." He pushed the blanket aside and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, testing to see how they'd hold up before standing up. "So what did I miss?"

"A lot. You'd better sit back down."

"What's wrong?" The boy sat back down, his eyes studying Bruce's face. "Did something happen to my mom or Matty?"

"Not exactly," Bruce muttered. He fought with himself for a moment before laying it out. He'd never believed in softening news. "I've never met you before today."

Terry's eyes narrowed. "I hate time travel," he said at last, his voice deadly quiet. "What else?"

"According to what Watchtower could dig up, Terry McGinnis was never born."

"So why am I still here? Shouldn't I have disappeared?"

"I don't know. You were in Kryptonian stasis; maybe that shielded you. But you should know that whatever else happened in your life before now, no one will remember it."

Bruce watched as Terry processed this and wondered what the boy's life had been like before. If he'd had friends, they wouldn't remember him. He'd asked about his mother and someone named 'Matty' earlier, so he'd had family that might not exist either. Chloe's theory seemed to be holding up pretty well.

When the boy finally looked up he caught a flash of pain before a mask dropped across too-young features. "Can I have some privacy?" he asked. Bruce gave a short nod and left the room without comment.

Chloe was waiting for him in the hallway with two cups of coffee, her expression tired. "Clark went out on a League call to Japan. How did it go?"

"He'll handle it." He limped into an unoccupied room and sat down, and his friend joined him and handed him his cup. They sat in companionable silence, drinking their coffee and thinking their own thoughts. Finally he looked up at her, setting his cup and worries aside. "You know, this is the last thing someone in your condition needs."

"It's decaf," she said. "And somehow I'm not surprised that you figured it out. You're the first one besides Clark, you know." Curiosity sparked in her eyes. "So how did you put it together?"

"I've known you for over fifty years, Chloe. Either you had some work done, or you're pregnant. The surgery isn't your style."

Chloe glanced down and laughed a little, her cheeks pink. "Well, in a few weeks no one will be noticing those, assuming this goes with the human timetable."

"How are you going to deal with it?"

"We haven't decided yet. We've gone over every option we can think of, and can't come up with a solution we can agree on." There was a long pause as she toyed with the empty cup in her hands. "It's ironic, really," Chloe said finally. "We tried for years after we got married, and nothing happened. It nearly wrecked our marriage. And then when we noticed the aging thing, I thought that it was just as well we hadn't had kids. Clark and I threw ourselves into the League and each other, and I haven't regretted any of it."

"So why now?"

Chloe shrugged. "No idea. I haven't been on birth control in more than forty years. One day I woke up with morning sickness, the first time I'd been sick since I was changed, and I eventually realized I was pregnant with my husband's alien baby at the age of 78. With that background, we can't exactly go to a doctor with questions."

"Have you had any problems?"

"It's gone like a normal human pregnancy so far, but I doubt that will last. For all we know, Kryptonian gestation lasts for two years." Chloe made a face at that thought. "And if that happens, I'll probably end up killing the last Kryptonian myself."

Bruce was saved from answering by a soft chime. Chloe flipped open her phone with an easy motion. "Watchtower." She listened to the voice on the other end, her eyes narrowing. "I'll take care of it," she said finally, snapping her phone shut and turning to Bruce with a wry expression. "The emergency door on the next level has been tampered with," she told him. "It isn't telling the system when it opens."

"Would that be the door beneath us?" That was a little too coincidental for his tastes.

Chloe nodded. "I think I'll check in on Terry," she said, her voice carefully even.

"I'll join you." Bruce pushed himself out of the seat, ignoring the protest of his knees. Chloe waited for him by the door. There was a split second of emotion on her face, gone too quickly to be identified, and then she was Watchtower and ready for work.

A quick glance into the room down the hall answered his unspoken suspicions. Chloe fingered the holes where screws should be on the wall vent and smiled ruefully. "I hope this answered any doubts you were having," she said. "This is definitely an escape worthy of Batman. Any idea where he might be headed?"

"Let's step into your office and discuss it."

Chloe called from the elevator and cleared out her office, sending the three young superheroes manning the screens down to a secondary viewing room. The fewer people who saw Bruce Wayne in the building, the better.

Bruce took a seat facing Chloe's computer, with the Watchtower vidscreens visible on the wall behind it. "The McGinnis name is real. Run a search for it, ages 35 to 50, Gotham middle class. Check among the deceased as well."

"Looking for his mother?"

"Or the man he thinks of as his father. You were right; he wasn't raised by me, any version of me. I can't imagine why it happened that way, but it did."

Chloe's hands flew across the keyboard, entering in his parameters. "I'm sure the other you had a good reason for what he did," she said, glancing at him.

"I'm not." Terry had joked with him earlier, so they must have had some kind of relationship. Maybe the other version of him had kept the secret for fear of losing the boy. It hurt to be abandoned. But he found it hard to believe that any realities' Batman could see Terry and not put the pieces together.

"I've got one hundred forty-three candidates," Chloe announced, interrupting his thought process. "Do you want to look among them for his mother?"

"It's as good a place to start as any."

He listened to the sound of her quiet typing as she eliminated by gender and race, leaving twenty-six to sort through. "No genetic disorders," she murmured to herself, and winnowed out another eleven. "What now?"

Bruce brought up a mental picture of Terry. "He has a cleft chin that he definitely didn't get from me. Check for that." Chloe complied, and two women remained. She brought up pictures of both. Mary Amelia McGinnis, deceased, wife of Warren Terrence McGinnis, also deceased, looked at them from one side of the screen. Elizabeth Roberta McGinnis, never married, currently a librarian with the public school system in Gotham, smiled from the right side. Bruce studied both pictures before gesturing to the one on the left. "That one."

"Mary McGinnis?"

"They have the same mouth and chin." Everything else was his, handed down to a youth he had never met before today. The thought was a little disturbing.

Chloe frowned, bringing up all the information she could on the woman. "She would have been married when Terry was conceived," she said, knowing Bruce had a long-standing policy against involvement with married women.

"And I would have been over sixty years old. Something tells me that there are unusual circumstances involved, though I doubt we'll ever know exactly what, since Terry doesn't seem to know. All that really matters now is that she was his mother, and I'm his father." It was the first time he had said it out loud, and the words felt strange in his mouth.

His friend apparently sensed his discomfort and brought the conversation back to the woman, allowing him a temporary reprieve. "Mary and Warren McGinnis died six years ago in a train accident. They had no children, although they were trying to adopt. Last known address . . ."

"Never mind that," Bruce said. "Where are they buried?"

She frowned and began typing rapidly. "Gotham Memorial," she said after a moment.

"That's where he'll end up." He stood up with a quiet grunt of effort. The day had been more strenuous than he was used to, and his bones ached. If he'd known he would live this long, he might not have been so hard on his body.

Chloe caught up to him at the elevator. She had a well-worn messenger bag slung over her shoulder. "Mind if I join you?"

Bruce's first inclination was to tell her that yes, he did mind. That this was a private matter and he would handle it. But Chloe would be an invaluable help in setting up Terry's new identity, and she and Clark and been his friends for a very long time. Besides, if it helped ease the guilt she seemed to be having over her own role in this matter, all the better. Finally he gave a short nod and she smiled and followed him into the elevator.

The trip from Metropolis to Gotham was shorter with Chloe driving. She filled the time with her personal observations of Terry in 2007, including Lois Lane nearly getting another Justice League notch on her belt.

"In retrospect, it makes sense that Terry is a hero of some kind. Lois was never attracted to the normal." Chloe's face grew sad for a moment; her cousin had died three years ago, and she was clearly still missed. Bruce understood that feeling well. Lois had been a woman full of fire and life, with a surprising layer of sweetness hidden underneath. But she had never been able to accept Batman as a part of his life, and they had fallen apart.

The car slowed down as it reached Gotham city limits, although it was still going well above the posted limits. "Turn here," Bruce instructed, and Chloe obeyed, visibly putting her feelings aside and concentrating on her driving. Gotham was a city that had grown up from a village and so was hard to negotiate even when you were a native, let alone someone who had lived in Metropolis for most of her life.

Luckily, she was riding with a man that knew how to navigate Gotham blindfolded. Bruce guided her down narrow one-way streets and around speed traps until they reached what was called "Old Gotham," the district where Batman had once ruled the night. There was no danger of being pulled over here; the police had long since left the area for more populated ground. Most of the storefronts were boarded shut, and only a handful of people hurried along the cracked sidewalks. It was a dying section of the city, abandoned by even its residents, and that hurt him more than he would have admitted. It was here that his parents had died so long ago, and it was here that his mission had been born and carried out. This place was the true home of Batman, and no matter how often he saw the neglect it grieved him. He gritted his teeth and continued giving terse directions to the cemetery, which Chloe followed without comment.

She parked at the gates and they both got out of the car and headed inside. Bruce started toward the new section, and his friend followed after another of those odd hesitations he had noticed in the tower. He ignored her questioning and possible pitying look and moved stiffly past the monuments, deliberately choosing a path that would not take him past the Wayne family plot. His right leg began to burn as he walked slowly down the rows, scanning the names on the stones as he went.

His search ended after six rows. He hobbled over to where the young man was sitting, his back pressed against the cool marble and his knees drawn up, and stood underneath one of the trees that dotted the property. Chloe stood off to the side, letting the two of them have some sort of privacy, and Bruce appreciated that. This conversation was probably going to be painful. He leaned on his cane, easing his weight off his bad leg, and waited.

"It's not fair." The words were petulant, even childish, but the tone was more resigned than anything else.

"I know."

Terry seemed to struggle for a moment, trying to pull his thoughts together. "I'll never be able to find a way back to my family, will I?"

"Probably not."

"So now I've lost not only my dad, but my mom and my little brother too." His voice picked up some heat. "My family is gone."

"Not exactly."

The teenager looked up at Bruce for the first time, his expression unreadable. "What does that mean? What aren't you telling me?"

"It can wait."

"Go ahead." He gave a short, bitter laugh and returned his gaze to the grass at his feet. "What's one more surprise?"

Bruce studied him for several long moments. This was probably not the best time and definitely not the best place for this kind of revelation, but he had a feeling that Terry would dig in his heels until he was told everything. "When . . . Superman brought you in, he ran a DNA scan."

"And?"

"I'm your father."

The dark head shot up so fast and hard that it scraped against the headstone. "What?" His fists clenched, and Bruce noted the blood on his split-open knuckles as the boy visibly strained to control his emotions. Anger flared in those pale eyes as Terry stood up and walked toward him. "How?"

"I don't know."

That answer seemed to feed the anger, and Terry slammed his left fist into the tree. Bruce heard the distinctive cracking sound of bones breaking, but the young man seemed immune to the physical pain. "He did it," Terry ground out, his voice filled with a mixture of anger, sorrow and a little bit of horror. "God, he really did it. He's the only one who could." He looked up at Bruce, his expression anguished. "Bruce changed my DNA."

"No, Terry." Chloe came up to him like she would approach a wounded animal, her movements slow and cautious. "No one changed your DNA. It would have come up in the scan. And you know that he would never do such a thing."

"But it doesn't make any sense," the young man argued. Some of the anger seemed to leach out of him with her soft-spoken words, but it was still present in his eyes. "Bruce didn't meet my mother until I was fifteen years old."

"We can't know the details of how it happened, since it didn't happen this time around," Bruce said, part of him wanting to extend some sort of comforting gesture but not sure of what to use or how it would be received. "It would be a waste of time and resources to try and figure it out. All we can know is that you were born this way." Born a Wayne and destined to have a hard life, he thought to himself, but didn't share with the others.

"Let's go get your hand fixed, and then you can decide what to do from there," Chloe said matter-of-factly, changing the subject abruptly. "What did you do to the right?"

Terry looked down at his hands as if noticing the pain for the first time. Three fingers on the left were swollen, probably broken, and the knuckles on both were split open and bleeding. "I hit a wall when I found out about . . .," he trailed off and looked away.

"Do you want to wait until we get to the Tower?"

"The Cave," he and Bruce said in unison. Terry looked at the older man with a hint of exasperation as he went back to the gravestone for his backpack. He touched the stone quietly for a moment with his least-damaged hand, then turned back and joined them as they headed toward the gate of the cemetery.

The drive from Gotham Memorial to Wayne Manor was a familiar one for Bruce, and he spent the time cataloging his observations and tying in what Chloe had told him. Chloe was once again driving (Bruce suspected that she had some control issues, but he'd thought that for years), and he and Terry were in the backseat, sitting in a silence that should have been uncomfortable, but somehow wasn't. His newly-minted teenage son watched the city go by through the windows, and he alternated between watching the scenery and studying Terry, which got him at least one annoyed expression from the young man.

Before long they were down in the comfortable, familiar confines of the cave. Terry sat quietly at the work table while Bruce efficiently, if not gently, set the bones of his hand and taped them up. Chloe waited upstairs out of respect for Bruce, who had never liked anyone but bat personnel in his private domain. Bruce watched as Terry gingerly flexed his fingers, which worked stiffly, and reached down to rub Ace's ears with his right hand. Ace allowed this affection, although he didn't return it in any of his own ways.

Finally Terry looked up at Bruce. "I don't know what I want to do," he said. "I just know that I want – I _need_ to be Batman."

Bruce bit back his immediate negative response. Suddenly vivid in his mind was the image of Tim Drake, broken and sobbing in Barbara's arms in the ruins of Arkham. He looked over at the Robin costume in its case, the move almost involuntary, and Terry followed his gaze with a knowing expression. The cave was silent except for the slight flutter of wings and the barely-audible hum of electronics. Finally Bruce softened, although only someone who knew him would recognize it. "Six months training. Then we'll see."

Terry nodded. "Fair enough." He held out his right hand to Bruce. "We'll figure the rest of it out as we go along."

Bruce reached out and shook the young man's hand, catching some glint of emotion in his face. "Agreed."


End file.
